The present invention relates to a hand held rotary cutting device and, more particularly, to a rotary cutting device for relatively thin food such as pizza.
It is well known to use rotary cutting devices having cutting wheels with sharpened peripheries to cut and slice relatively thin foods such as pizza. The cutting wheel is pressed downwardly through the food as the cutting device is guided to roll the wheel along selected paths of travel where cuts are to be made.
A drawback common to many known and proposed rotary cutting devices is that their components are configured in ways that not only permit but also encourage portions of food being cut to adhere to the cutting wheels, and to be carried into interior regions of components that surround, support and/or house portions of the cutting wheels—which can quickly cause a deterioration of the cutting action of the cutting wheels as they become progressively more difficult to turn, leaving ragged and uneven cuts in place of the clean, straight-line cuts that are desired.
Some known and proposed rotary cutting devices have recognized the advantages that are attainable by utilizing annular cutting blades instead of disk-shaped cutting blades. For example, the use of an annular cutting blade that has a sizable open center region permits the use of a compact form of housing that also has a sizable open center region, through which the fingers of a user's hand can extend to grasp a handle portion of the housing to provide cutting pressure and guidance to the rotary cutting device. However, a significant drawback of known and proposed rotary cutting devices that employ annular cutting blades is a failure resulting from the design of their housings to supply stability, cutting pressure and guidance to their annular cutting blades at locations extending along opposite sides of the cutting blades just above and quite near to where sharpened peripheral portions of the cutting blades are brought into engagement with and used to sever thin foods such as pizza.
Moreover, many known and proposed rotary cutting appliances fail to provide easy to open, easy to separate, and easy to disassemble components that facilitate the removal of collected and adhered food particles that may need to be removed during use, or that must be removed when the utensil is ready to be cleaned for storage and/or reuse. Some known and proposed rotary cutting utensils include a sizable number of components that, when disassembled for cleaning, leave the user with an erector set collection of parts to reassemble before the cutter can be returned to service.
Another common drawback of known and proposed rotary cutting devices is that the handles or housings that support their rotary cutting wheels are not well suited, ergonomically, to facilitate their being easily grasped by one's hand during use when downwardly directed cutting pressure needs to be applied to the food being cut, while also permitting the easy grasp of one's hand to guide the rotary cutting wheel along desired paths of travel where the food is to be severed.
These and other drawbacks of the prior art are addressed by rotary cutting devices of the present invention that are easy to grip, easy to use, and easy to clean.